I turn on the Weather Channel in the room we’re cleaning. The meteorologists are still delivering bad news like a party invitation. Severe winds. Torrential rain. Coastal flooding. Lightning.

All sound great to me, too.

“Grammy! I’ll be right back,” I say, running out to the grassy area. The sky right above is still blue. But the clouds in the distance are getting darker and moving our way quickly.

I run to the top of the wooden stairs and look down at the beach. Tressa and Brandy are lying on towels. Seeing Brandy makes me sad, and I get the funny thought that friendship is like boogie boarding. You have to learn when to hold on and when to let go. I feel better now that I’ve let go.

I do a double take when I look back up at the sky and see something I’ve only seen on weather shows. An enormous anvil cloud is out over the Atlantic. The edges of the cloud are crisp and defined. This means we are in for a serious thunderstorm and maybe even some waterspouts— tornadoes that form over the ocean and sometimes come up on land, dropping things they’ve sucked out of the sea as they travel.

I look down at Brandy and Tressa again. They are wearing their matching sunglasses; I wonder if I should warn them that they won’t need those for long, but I don’t have to—all of a sudden it gets really dark out, and people start fleeing the beach.

Tressa races by me, but Brandy stops. “This is wicked weather, Delsie. You aren’t going to sit on the beach and watch this, right?”

“No. I would, but I can’t. Grammy won’t let me.”

“Good,” she says, before running to catch up with Tressa.

I’m happy and have a little hope that Brandy does seem to care and maybe we’ll be friends again, after all. But as I watch her with Tressa, I accept that a friend who changes as much as the weather is no friend at all.

I look back toward the ocean. Cool air is blowing in, and Ronan’s dad is taking down the American flag.

A woman shields her face as she runs with a book and towel across the grass.

A volleyball is pushed up the sidewalk by the wind.

I run to the steps. The anvil cloud is closer. I can see the rain coming down out over the ocean—a curtain of water. It’s beautiful.

The waves come ashore like black claws. Hammers pounding the sand. The surf rumbles like thunder.

A beach umbrella is lifted out of the sand and tumbles down the beach. It flips end to end right over where Tressa and Brandy had been.

And then the sky cracks in two. The rain doesn’t come slowly. It comes all at once in sheets.

I run to find Grammy. When I get to the cottage where her supply wagon is parked, I step inside. “The weather is super cool. I mean, I guess some people would say really bad.”